That's a pretty long subject line for this post, isn't it? Well, I kept pretty busy this weekend in general. I guess I'll start with the topic I've already conversed about a dozen times at work this morning, but there was a beta run of a little title called Diablo III. Maybe you're heard of it?

I fiddled around with the barbarian and demon hunter, and liked how the two classes felt so different from one another. I think the visuals, while a departure in style from the first Diablo (full confession here - but I never did get to play Diablo II - I didn't have an adwquate computer at the time so it was just a missed title for me), I found the graphics and gameplay itself to be satisfying.

So was it all rainbows and puppies? Unfortunately not. While the game itself seemed very polished, Blizzard no doubt got the stress test the wanted with difficultly in areas such as the download launcher (a handful of errors on my part that mysteriously just went away on future tries) and long wait times. I got roughly two hours in with the game, but not for lack of trying to get more. Overall though, I am quite excited by the title, which comes out exactly one week before my birthday. I get the feeling I know what game I'm grabbing for my birthday.

*** Edited to add ***

Because I was asked for a few more thoughts, I put this in comments but will add here as well:

More Diablo 3 huh? Well, a few more off of the top of my head:

-
I liked demon hunter more than barbarian, which is sort of funny since
in 90% of rpg games I take the warrior class first, but demon hunter
forced me to be more creative I felt.

- The graphics were good,
but they were not anywhere near as taxing as SC II it seemed. One of my
buddies at work confirmed this as well. Pushing things to max on SC II
gave his ridiculously tricked-out system a pretty good test, but D3 did
nothing of the sort. I know from my own experience, I play SC 2 at
about half graphics and d3 I was almost 100% on everything.

- Loot drops are still fun. :)

-
The use of hotkeys reminded me a bit of WoW, as did the colors used in
the visuals. I didn't play with any friends, but I have read that the
difficulty scales depending on if you are solo or not.

- Max cap
was 15 according to one friend who spent most of the weekend on there.
He said he felt like he was struggling a bit to make sense of the skills
as he got up in levels though he didn't explain further.

-
I've heard complaints about not utilizing WASD controls, but I was fine
with click to move, which is what I prefer in a lot of other games too.

- I want the sound track. There were a few songs in particular
I really liked, though I have no clue what they're called at this
point.

- Ease. I know it's a beta, but it all seemed a bit... easy.

*** End above edit ***

Other titles that I poked and prodded over the weekend:

- Final Fantasy XIII-2: Not a ton new to report here. I figure I'm teetering around the game's midpoint, but overall I am enjoying it, even if the story is a bit flaky in places for my liking. The rest of the game's mechanics show that the devs took a lot of the criticisms for XIII to heart.

- Record of Agarest War Zero: I would guess I have passed the 1/3 mark here? One thing I notice is that this game feels shorter than the initial Agarest War. There is a neat 'digest mode' you can access that gives you the ability to play through the primary plot points of the first game, and it does trigger some stuff in Zero if you have end game data from the first game as well. I am a bit of a sucker for those data tie-ins. I do like how the game seems to allow you to get to the 'perfect ending' more easily than the first game, though I do have a slight bone to pick with the whole 'perfect end' principle in general that I'll likely get into with the full review when I beat it.

- Kid Icarus - Uprising: Got through another couple of stages, updated my weapon. Not a lot to report here. This game's sort of my filler for when my wife's watching Netflix. Which is going to lead to another post. I'm staggered lately by the number of people I see using their consoles for non-gaming purposes lately. I use them sparingly for blu-ray or Netflix, but I'm noticing that at any given time, 75% of my Xbox or PS3 friends are using their systems for Hulu, Netflix, listening to music - things like that.

And lastly, I spent a huge chunk of the day yesterday fiddling with RPG Maker VX Ace. I have already written up a review for Otaku Gaming recently, which went over some of the product's talking points and ease of use. I tried to look at it primarily from the perspective of someone who may be new to the series, or at least relatively new, such as my son.

I plan to do a second write-up on here though, where I go over deeper impressions as I have continued to use the software more and more. Small things like trying new, specific scripts that are being released, some of the significant time-savers built in (like a lot of the text message options and greater database flexibility than I saw in RPG Maker XP) as well as just some of the fun new bells and whistles (I'm loving that I can add movies to it now).

So while my RMXP project, KotL: Summoner collects dust in My Documents folder on my hard drive, I've begun a new project that will be a bit more streamlined as I try to get a game out of it. Again, it will be a swords and sorcery fantasy setting, but hopefully it'll turn out well. I'm hopeful that things like random character and dungeon generators will prove great time savers for me as I continue to plug away at this.

How was your weekend? Anyone else play anything new and exciting? Anyone else get their hands on the D3 beta this weekend and if so, what did you think? Sound off below!

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My friend's girlfriend tried Record Agarest and said it was "too JPRG-ish". Whatever that means I have no idea, but apparently it was built for the crowd only.

I don't mean to burst your Final Fantasy bubble... but sadly FFXIII-2 ends on a sour note. The adventure up to the ending is one of the better series' renditions in recent years but falls short with a dreaded "To be Continued" screen.

@Jeff - LOL, yeah. I commented on something like this on another forum this morning actually. My wife can watch me play Skyrim no problem, but games like Agarest War that have the heavy anime influence get her to roll her eyes at me a bit now and then. There's definitely that air of quirkiness to the series that serves to cater a specific crowd, while often excluding it from broader acceptance I suspect.

As for the FF XIII-2 ending? Yeah, I heard about that. I've also heard mixed rumors on whether that to be continued is a pointer to an XIII-3 or more DLC.

I can appreciate Square Enix for taking some chances and doing some new things with FF XIII-2, like the DLC for example, but it seems like these are things a large game developer should already be comfortable with by this time in the console generation's life cycle - not stumbling around.

- I liked demon hunter more than barbarian, which is sort of funny since in 90% of rpg games I take the warrior class first, but demon hunter forced me to be more creative I felt.

- The graphics were good, but they were not anywhere near as taxing as SC II it seemed. One of my buddies at work confirmed this as well. Pushing things to max on SC II gave his ridiculously tricked-out system a pretty good test, but D3 did nothing of the sort. I know from my own experience, I play SC 2 at about half graphics and d3 I was almost 100% on everything.

- Loot is still super rewarding.

- The use of hotkeys reminded me a bit of WoW, as did the colos used in the visuals. I iddn't play with any friends, but I have read that the difficulty scales depending on if you are solo or not.

- Max cap was 15 according to one friend who spent most of the weekend on there. He said he felt like he was struggling a bit to make sense of the skills as he got up in levels though he didn't explain further.

- I've heard complaints about not utilizing WASD controls, but I was fine with click to move, which is what I prefer in a lot of other games too.

- I want the sound track. There were a few songs in particular I really liked, though I have no clue what they're called at this point.

I'm jealous of your hardcore gaming weekend; looking forward to some of that "sometime".

Sounds pretty cool with everything mentioned, though hearing that D3 isn't as taxing as SCII is a good thing. I think I have SCII on medium and it sure loves to eat up CPU/RAM. (was using 1.5GB ram at one point, would be interesting to see how much it eats now that I have 8GB total) Since I use a laptop I also have to manually crank up the fan or the cpu/gpu will run really hot. Anyway, no beta for me right now, but may look at it down the road.

Spirit Tracks arrived on Saturday and I've put a few hours into it. I'm still sorting through some thoughts as the game slowly unfolds. Some parts are pretty enjoyable and I'm kind of scratching my head on others. :)

@Robert lol at the Spirit Tracks remark. Always tough trying to learn your way around a new version of a familiar series.

And overall, I agree about the D3 cpu usage. I know my co-worker was bummed, but he's got a pretty ridiculous machine. He cranked up Skyrim to max, and used some adjustable settings to elevate the detail beyond that and complained it wasn't a great test, but I think he's put more into his machine than I did into my car. :P